The Chicago Wrap-Up AUTOMATE 2026: Building Engines, Not Dinosaurs

McCormick Place is loud. Flashy too.

And sure, that is part of the fun.

But the real excitement is not on the trade show floor. It is next week, when we are back onsite and actually running bots in client buildings.

That is where this stuff gets real.

That said, the best part of being at the show is still the people.

The floor is full of people who actually know how to drive value with automation, not just sell shiny objects. That part is always worth the trip. It is good to spend time with people who understand real operations and like working through real move, store, and track problems together.

Chicago had plenty of humanoid hype. Plenty of big promises. Plenty of things built to stop traffic in a booth.

But the stuff that actually works is usually a lot less flashy.

It is boring in the best way. Modular. Practical. Built to help the people already on your floor instead of trying to replace them.

That is true for moving, storing, and tracking tech. The machine matters. The fit matters more.

The Best Piece of Automation is Already on Your Floor

After a week in Chicago, that point felt even more obvious.

Your lead operator knows where time gets wasted. Your inventory team knows where things get lost. Your forklift drivers know where the long miles are. Your material flow team knows what will hold up in the real world.

That is why we start with people first. The best piece of any solution is the people. Good automation backs them up. It does not fight them.

The best things we saw at the show were not the ones trying to steal the spotlight. They were the ones built to take a few repetitive jobs off a good team’s plate so that team could stay focused on the work that actually needs judgment.

And honestly, that is what makes a show like this useful. You get to collaborate with

people who know how to turn good equipment into real solutions. Not theater. Not future-state fluff. Real solutions that help people move material better, use storage better, and track work better.

That is also the point of a show like this. It is easy to get lost in the hype and start buying for some version of the future that may never show up the way you think it will.

It is a little like building in the 90s when everyone was running ethernet cables through every wall while wifi and bluetooth were already on the horizon. If you over-build for the wrong future, you can end up with a building full of expensive, obsolete wires.

That is not a growth plan. That is how you build a dinosaur.

The "Anvil in a Sandbox" Test

We still want equipment that is tough enough for a warehouse but simple enough for anyone to use.

That is what we mean by an anvil in a sandbox.

It should hold up in a real building. It should survive dust, traffic, bad handoffs, and daily repetition. It should also be simple enough that your team can start using it without turning the rollout into a full-time project.

That test mattered all over the show floor. The real question was not whether something looked impressive in a booth. The real question was whether it would hold up on a Tuesday in a busy building.

For AMRs, we want to know if the robot is solving a real movement problem, like taking 40 moves a day off your team. That is where the math starts to get real. For storage and tracking software, we want to know if it makes the floor easier to run this month, not someday.

Building a Growth Engine

The win is not buying the most futuristic thing on the floor.

The win is building a scalable growth engine.

That means using tech that helps right now but still gives you room to grow later. It means letting time work for you, not against you. It means picking equipment and software that solve a problem today without boxing you into a giant rebuild tomorrow.

That is why the boring stuff keeps winning.

An AMR that can take 40 moves a day off your team matters. Storage systems that make space work harder matter. Tracking software that helps you see and manage the floor better this month matters. Those are real gains. They stack. They scale.

That is how you build momentum without building a dinosaur.

Start Small, Scale Fast

The biggest takeaway from Chicago was simple.

The future does not have to show up all at once.

For most small and mid-sized operations, the better move is to start with today’s bottleneck and fix it with something your team can actually use. If a machine can take 40 moves a day off your floor, that matters. If it can cut pallet movement time or make inventory easier to track, that matters too. That is how ROI starts showing up in the real world.

That is how mid-market automation should work. Start with one robot. Start with software. Start with one piece of equipment that solves one real problem. Then add to it once the team owns it and the value is clear.

Modular beats all-in.

Chicago was a good reminder of that. The flashy stuff gets the crowd. The boring, modular stuff is what actually gets deployed.